Life goes on: The influence of the perceived quality of social relations on older women’s mental health after the loss of a partner in Europe

Abstract

The loss of a spouse/partner is a major stressor, undermining one’s mental health, especially in mid-life and old age. Social ties are key moderators of the impact of bereavement, serving to enhance psychological resilience and facilitating social engagement and access to resources. Our aim was to explore the association between depression levels and the interaction between the composition of, and level of satisfaction with, social networks among women who have lost their husband. The study was undertaken from a cross-national perspective, examining women throughout Europe. We used data from the SHARE Survey (sixth wave; N = 6,820). Using linear regression models, we find negative evaluations of social relations influenced the mental health of European widows, mostly when relatives exclusively composed their social network. The perceived quality of that network had more impact on the mental health of older widows in Northern and Western European countries than in their Southern and Eastern counterparts.

Keywords:

• Depression
• Social Support
• Crossnational/international studies
• Widows

Acknowledgements

This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 6 (DOI: 10.6103/SHARE.w6.600). The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and FP7 (SHARE-PREP: N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: N°227822, SHARE M4: N°261982). Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01_AG09740-13S2, P01_AG005842, P01_AG08291, P30_AG12815, R21_AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG_BSR06-11, OGHA_04-064) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org).

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of the project “Prevention is better than cure when ageing is behind the door: interplay between social determinants of health in Spain (INTERSOC-HEALTH)” (RTI2018-099875-J-I00 -MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE- PI: Jordi Gumà) funded by FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University/Spanish Agency of Research. This work also belongs to the multi-country project “Care, Retirement & Wellbeing of Older People Across Different Welfare Regimes (CREW)”. The project is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness under Grant (PCIN-2016-005; PI: Aïda Solé-Auró) within the second Joint Programming Initiative “More Years Better Lives 2017-2020”.